Hire This Woman is a recurring feature on ComicsAlliance that shines a spotlight on female comics pros, whether they're relative newcomers or experienced pros who are ready to break out. In an overwhelmingly male business, we want to draw your attention to these creators --- and to raise their profile with editors and industry gatekeepers.

Cartoonist Maria-Elisa Heg does a bit of everything including writing, drawing, coloring, lettering, and singing. She's primarily worked on anthologies, educational comics, and auto-bio comics. She's also co-head of Zinefest Houston. Just like last week's featured person, C.M. Bratton, you can see her in person at the Hire This Woman panel at STAPLE! in Austin, Texas, on March 7th.

The world of pro wrestling can be a beautiful thing. For proof, you need look no further than the recent developments in lucha libre, in which there are not one, not two, but three different groups of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle-themed factions that have recently begun warring with each other. I can only assume this conflict was inevitable, but it came to a head when AULL's Tortiguillos Karatekas were taking on the IWRG's Tortugas Ninja in a four-on-four tag team match that was interrupted when a third faction, Las Tortugas Mutantes, ran in and started attacking everyone.

There aren't many decades that brought as much change for women as the 1960s. The roles and rights of women changed and the world met second wave feminism --- and yet, especially at the beginning of the decade, women were still often expected to fill only the role of a housewife and mother.

This is where Joëlle Jones and Jamie S. Rich's Lady Killer comes in, set in 1962. Lady Killer's heroine Josie is exactly the housewife and mother that the times demanded she be, and a focused career woman who happens to make a career out of assassination. It's a book that carries a lot of weight as a story about a woman in a time of great change. It's also a book that's easy on the eyes.

Over the past 40 years, Tom Batiuk’s Funky Winkerbean has transitioned from a gag-a-day comic strip about a high school to an ongoing chronicle of pure, abject misery. Thanks to the commentary on Josh Fruhlinger’s Comics Curmudgeon, I am now completely obsessed with it, which is why I spend a little time every month rounding up its finest examples of crushing despair.

I'm not going to lie to you, folks: Tommy B was in rare form last month. After crushing every ounce of hope I had left in me with January's monumentally disappointing Dick Tracy crossover, I assumed, having never learned my lesson about assumptions in the years that I've been reading this strip, that February would bring an upswing in quality. I mean, mathematically speaking, it would almost have to. And yet, Funky Winkerbean continues to defy all expectations. These strips might not have made me quite as angry as January's did, but believe me, folks: they get dark, even by Westview standards.

This morning, Hot Toys formally unveiled the Avengers: Age of Ultron Iron Man Hulkbuster sixth-scale figure. As arguably the most anticipated collectible from the series, fans had been salivating and speculating for months about what to expect. Judging from the announcement, those expectations will be met, and then some.

Brian Hibbs has put up his great yearly analysis of the Bookscan numbers over at Comic Book Resources, and they reflect a change that's slowly dawning on many people in comics right now: books for women and children are where the money is. Nine of the top twenty books sold and tracked by Bookscan last year were by women, and twelve of the top twenty were books for kids.

Costume design is one of the great strengths of the superhero genre, a way to establish distinctive visual shorthand for a character and reveal key details about concept, purpose, and personality. But which is the best superhero costume of all time? This month, we’re asking you to decide, by voting up your favorites and voting down the rest. When we have your votes, we’ll compile a list of the greatest super-costumes of all time.

In today's poll we look at some of costumes worn by the members of notorious loner Batman's extended bat-family, including the recently revamped Burnside take on Batgirl, the original Robin design first worn by Dick Grayson, and the same character's much later Nightwing costume.We haven't included the Nightwing costume with the fringe, as we're pretty sure that costume isn't going to win any polls.

Netflix will next formally turn its attention to the release of Marvel’s Daredevil, now that Season 3 of House of Cards fell on us this past weekend, and what better way than to introduce us to a figure more formidable thank Frank Underwood? Meet Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk, and Marvel debuts its first official photos of the new Kingpin!

Last weekend, the Long Beach Comic Expo presented the first annual Dwayne McDuffie Diversity Award, named for the late writer whose career was marked by a commitment to creating a more diverse cast of characters and creators in both comics and animation. Actor Phil LaMarr --- best known to superhero fans as the voice of Green Lantern on Justice League cartoons produced and frequently written by McDuffie --- served as MC for the event, and the ceremony included speeches from creators Reginald Hudlin, Denys Cowan, and Charlotte Fullerton, who is also McDuffie's widow. It was Fullerton who announced the winner: Nilah Magruder, nominated for her webcomic, M.F.K.

DC’s foothold in the TV game got exponentially bigger with the potential for yet another Arrow spinoff for The CW, but FOX too is making strides toward its comic future. Following the pilot greenlight of Neil Gaiman Sandman spinoff Lucifer, FOX has appointed Rush star Tom Ellis as our new Prince of Darkness.

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